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Bloggers and Economists are Failing on Immigration

This is a point I hinted at in this previous post but I wanted to make more explicitly. Bloggers and economists are failing when it comes to their coverage and discussion of immigration as an economic policy lever. Despite the occasional coverage it does get, the fact that we should have more high-skilled immigration (HSI) remains an extremely under-blogged topic. Yes, there are many things that “deserve more attention”, especially many third-world tragedies. But this is domestic policy of extreme importance, and it is a solution rather than an unsolvable problem in a faraway land.

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High skilled immigrants are entrepreneurs, it would help ameliorate our long-run demographic problems, etc., etc. You know the arguments.

(…) I understand the public opposition to this issue and the political gridlock, but I think it is professional malpractice that economists see trillions of dollars in pareto improvements going to waste and don’t scream about it from the rooftops daily because it’s not as fun to argue about. I don’t think the public has a good sense of the extent to which more high-skilled immigration would help us, and part of the problem is precisely that we don’t scream this from the rooftops with the regularity and fervor it deserves.

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I am challenging bloggers and economists to answer these questions: are you writing and talking as much about high-skilled immigration as you should be? And if not, why aren’t you doing it more?